Mark and I went to the Inauguration and I didn’t bring my laptop for the trip so I didn’t do any blogging. I’m hoping I can’t catch a re-broadcast of it on C-SPAN since in the standing room area we were we only saw what was visible on the jumbotron behind a large speaker. We also didn’t hear a lot of it since we were standing near the guy who somehow managed to climb a tree with a protest sign. As the Capitol Police tried in vain to get him to come down, he climbed as high as he could and shouted nonstop about abortion and the need for President Obama to “repent” his baby-killin’ ways. It was fairly impressive how the protester was able to keep the bellowing up in the cold temperatures while clinging to a swaying branch, but the crowd wasn’t impressed. Exasperated people in the crowd yelled at him to shut up and get down from the tree. Others weren’t even that charitable.

The guy’s action was the kind of disruption and civil disobedience that is typical for a lot of movements, including social justice movements that I support, so it would be hypocritical to single him out for condemnation simply for being obnoxious during a solemn occasion. The thing is, Tree Guy is clearly not fighting for social justice, though he probably considers himself a bold crusader for the powerless. No, he’s really part of a movement bent on imposing their radical religious authoritarian views on women. Simple as that.

And it turns out that what is unpersuasive from an angry man yelling in a tree isn’t much more compelling coming from the glib professional class of anti-choice activists and politicians preening about how much they care about the delicate ladies being traumatized by abortion. Honestly, the more exposure the professional anti-choicers get, the more coherent and genuine the guy in the tree sounds.

Following the widely publicized misstatements of Todd Akin and Richard Mourdock , Save the 1 has been created to equip politicians who hold to the 100% prolife position, educating them on the statistics and facts that support 100% abortion bans. Save the 1 will include the personal stories of rape victims and people conceived in rape who seek legal protection for all unborn babies, no matter the circumstances of their conception.

Founder of Save the 1 and spokesperson for Personhood USA, attorney Rebecca Kiessling was conceived in rape and has become an outspoken advocate for others like her and for women, such as her mother, who have been raped.

Save the 1 intends to remove and prevent ‘rape exceptions’, starting with the Hyde Amendment. Save the 1 is a reference to the parable of the lost sheep in Matthew 18:10-14, in which the shepherd leaves his 99 sheep behind to find the 1 sheep who was lost.

“Rape and abortion are wrong for the same reason; they are both violent acts of aggression against another person,” continued Kiessling. “If you really care about rape victims, you should want to protect them from the rapist, and from the abortion, and NOT the baby. A baby is not the worst thing which can happen to a rape victim — an abortion is.”

Yeesh.

2012 was the year when the American public got a full onslaught of anti-choice nuttery trying its hardest to look respectable. Akin’s and Moudock’s statements weren’t “misstatements” at all: both men very calmly and confidently put forth what they believe about rape and pregnancy. They didn’t use any harsh language or tones either. Akin’s assertion that women’s bodies shut down pregnancy during so-called legitimate rape is apparently not uncommon among social conservatives. And there’s not much daylight at all between Mourdock’s claim that rape pregnancies are gifts from God and Rebecca Kiessling’s group Save the 1′s position on that. When anti-abortion activists are asked, as Susan B. Anthony List President Marjorie Dannenfelser was by MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, about what the law on abortion should be, they refuse to produce a straight answer. Basically, they look like the worst and most desperate used car salesmen ever.

The result of the disconnect between the anti-choice movement and everyone else is that, oh look, support for legal abortion is at an all-time high on the 40th anniversary of Roe v Wade.

If screechers in trees and their phony professional counterparts wanted to stop abortion, they’d support contraception access and comprehensive sex ed. They don’t, of course. I definitely think we’d get a more honest response out of the guy in the tree for why that is.

“Rape and abortion are wrong for the same reason; they are both violent acts of aggression against another person,” continued Kiessling.

Really? Really?
Both are forced in your illogical mind?
Both carry the same impact on a woman?
Classic false equivalance. Being slipped a Roofi and thenbeing raped in a car is the same as going to a medical clinic for a procedure of your choice?

A baby is not the worst thing which can happen to a rape victim — an abortion is.”

Again, WTF?
Forget about the rape and the horror and shame. Having an abortion by choice is worse?

Seriously messed up female window dressing for theocratic based fanatics almost primal desire to control women.

By controlling the narrative with false equivalences and false medical and religious justifications, fanatics want to do what they absolutely must do.
Control control control.

These ARE fanatics and they are so rigidly sure in their belief that they see anything, anything, that advances their agenda as morally allowed and what they are against as divinely proscribed.

Statements such as “since Roe 45 million babies have been killed by abortion” are as frequent as “abortion is the cause of God’s wrath”.

This is because it’s much easier to see abortion as something we can disagree with when women are eliminated from the story. Note however, that opponents of abortion aren’t willing to say 45 million women have murdered their babies, or women themselves are causing God’s wrath. They may think it, but to blame women publically for abortion seems somehow callous. Leaving women out of the narrative, or including the new narrative that women are themselves also harmed by abortion, makes women sympathetic victims absolved of responsibility

THANK YOU!

Controlling women controls the narrative. These fanatics refuse to admit what they want would make millions of women appear to be criminals and murderers.

I saw a clip of that man in the tree. In the clip, another man on the ground was giving the tree man the finger.
I could not agree more Donna, the movement is bent on “imposing their radical religious authoritarian views on women. Simple as that.”
I know there are a lot of true believers who are simple-minded men and women who do not understand the embryonic stage of development or nature, and they feel strongly about abortion.
What is truly disgusting is that evil-minded politicians, those who know better, are now linking abortion and rape as wrong for the same reason. That is sick.

Did someone say for these theocratic zealots ANYTHING is morally allowed in their jihad.

Should a recently introduced bill in New Mexico become law, rape victims will be required to carry their pregnancies to term during their sexual assault trials or face charges of “tampering with evidence.”

Under HB 206, if a woman ended her pregnancy after being raped, both she and her doctor would be charged with a felony punishable by up to 3 years in state prison:

Tree idiot got busted. Cops left him in tree for 5 hours.In the cold. He was under a court order to stay out of DC.